A place to put my epiphanies
[e·piph·a·ny - n. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.]

Monday, 1 January 2018

New Year's Day parkrun double

Our Parys parkrun was again part of a 'New Year's Day double' with Potchefstroom parkrun and the new Meyerton parkrun. Potch and Meyerton started at 07h00 to give participants enough time to run or walk their courses and to get through to Parys for our 09h00 start.

I set off for Potch at 6am with Louis and Karen, fellow Parys Run Directors, as well as Ruben, Celliers' son. Something started clicking for him a few months ago and he is really getting into his mountain biking, kayaking and parkrunning. Despite a late night, Ruben was keen to come through to Potch as he has only ever done our Parys parkrun. He unfortunately couldn't make the double as he needed to get through to his mom's house - they have all left for a few days away.

Before the Potch start we took a photo with a number of our Parys regulars.

Ruben and I ran together. He enjoyed being at Potch parkrun and we decided that we need to get Celliers and Kyla to join us for a parkrun here.

It looked like Ruben was the only child participating at Potch parkrun this morning - he was very chuffed with this observation. With Potch completed, we headed back to Parys. I dropped off Ruben at home, said bye to the children and took Rusty and my camera to our parkrun.

We had a record number of participants today - around 193! At the finish Louis even had to scratch in our parkrun box for the tokens from 150 on (we don't usually need to use them!). It was cooking hot out there but still the participants were full of smiles. Lots of parkrun Tourists as well as those doing the New Year's double bolstered our numbers. It was a colourful and friendly morning.

Going into 2018... I should reach my 100 parkrun milestone. As Rusty is on the mend after her toe injury I'll be getting her back up to fitness and aiming to get her faster than me. I look forward to setting a new PB with her. Two weeks ago I ran my fastest time for 2017 (without her). My actual PB was set on our old course, which was about 300m shorter. I'd like to better it.